Summary

A horrible, disgusting disgrace to the Ninja Gaiden legacy and the NES original.

The Good

You can play the NES version of Ninja Gaiden II instead.

The Bad

This port did almost NOTHING right compared to the NES original. The game speed is extremely unstable and horribly choppy, the collision detection seems to make enemies hurt you when you're about 5 pixels away from them (I think maybe that's just me), and the controls on a keyboard stink...it's impossible to be able to jump, attack, and move with the speed and fluidity this game demands.

To top it off, the graphics converted over terribly. The new VGA coloration doesn't make things in this game look better...they look worse!! Whoever chose the color palettes must've been color blind or something, because I REALLY don't think that Ryu wore orange in the NES version, and I don't even think that anything looks the right color here. Plus, the animation in this version is an abomination...the NES, for being a machine with less horsepower, less colors on screen, and a LOT less memory than a PC, performed MUCH better in providing fluid-looking animation! Even worse, the in-game cutscenes, which in the NES version had surpassed the ones in the first Ninja Gaiden by a longshot, look horrible and almost like a first-time artist redid them. It's a shame what they did.

I could never get the sound effects to work, so I can't rant about them. The music, however...whoever was responsible for porting the music must've been tone-deaf, because I think he BUTCHERED, not PORTED, the awesome NES tunes over.

The Bottom Line

This is a disgraceful slap in the face of Ninja Gaiden. Play the NES version of Ninja Gaiden II instead.